The subject of Net Neutrality seems to be reaching a head here in Canada. And the driving force behind it, is not consumers, or ‘think tanks’ but rather ISP’s themselves. The internet is not a level playing field, but rather a type of grand MLM scheme. Most ISP’s in Canada are small fish serving from a few hundred to a few thousand customers. They have no real infrastructure, but rather lease space from the big companies. The biggest player being Bell Canada.
Stories have been emerging over the past two weeks that Bell Canada has been throttling internet traffic to these small ISP’s, The technical term is ‘Traffic Shaping’. The result has been a dramatic slowdown for the small ISP’s customers.
These small ISP’s do belong to a loose trade organization The Canadian Association of Internet Providers, and they have now petitioned the Canadian Radio, Television and Telecommunications Commission (the equivalent of the FCC) to block Bell Canada from engaging in any more throttling or traffic shaping. They are in practice asking the government to step in and stop the practice.
All in all it has been a rough time for the PR folks at Bell Canada, and as if this throttling issue were not enough of a challenge, a report published by the anti virus company Symantec today, claims that Bell Canada is the worst offender in Canada for originating and propagating malware and spam!
On throttling, the Bell folks deny that such a slowdown exists, and if it does they say it is not from traffic shaping. But customers of Bell Canada have reported that they are experiencing a loss of as much as 90 percent of their normal bandwidth and speed.
And on the Symantec report…. a Bell spokesman managed some fine doublespeak “I trust that once we’ve had a chance to review the data, we will be able to reinforce what we’ve known all along, that we have Canada’s safest and most secure network”
Simon Barrett
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7 users commented in " Net Neutrality, Canada’s CRTC To Weigh In? "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackI used to think that regulation was a bad thing. Bell has singlehandedly corrected that thinking, at least where a monopoly is involved!
Bell has been such an evil dictator to everyone for so long now. But, somehow, I knew there would come a day when Bell would have to answer for all of it.
Between the neutrality issue, the anti-throttling petition, and the anti-competition suits, Bell (and Rogers) has clearly demonstrated there is a blatant need for communications giants to be held accountable.
Now that the throttling debate has now been thrust into the CRTC’s lap, it will bring in the net neutrality question right along with it.
Let’s just hope the throttling petition doesn’t take months/years to be heard, or the very people that filed it may end up bankrupt first.
Hats off to the CAIP!
Can’t help thinking…
If there are to be these MAFIAA-backed media download sites, what will be the “accepted” file transfer method for these large files?
And, how will using that form of large file transfer NOT create more of the “bandwidth hogging” that P2P/BitTorrent is supposed to??
Talk about Bell-Hypocritico!
I think we need to be sure it’s “Traffic Shaping” and not the upsurge of P2P traffic that is at fault. Unfortunately, the use of P2P methods of propagation is tantamount to downloading the load, so to speak, from servers on the upper tier of the Net to the bottom end of the Net, which was never designed for this sort of serving.
Bell and Rogers both supply TV and phone services….
They dont want you using your internet connection for these services.
So instead of investing in the future of the internet…. they are “shaping” the traffic or limiting it.
Canada is far behind in thier internet technology compared with Europe…where they have speeds of 20MB….compared to my current service with sympatico hoovering about 2MB…on a good day. This is not due to P2P applications as it is to poor infrastructure…IMHO.
MLF
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Speaking of Bell being a dictator, It is just really simply unbelievable as to how Bell Sympatico accounting, Billing services are totally uncooperative, in responding to my rightful request for an immediate, simple print out, detailed account statement the
last 6 months of the 6 meg High Speed interest services that they are, have been providing for me. They Bell wrongfully merely seem to think I should pay them any amount of money they requested based on their word. I have
never experienced such unacceptable poor service or demands on their part any where in my whole life. Now I have had similar difficulties in having the same Bell Sympatico deliver me a reliable, decent, promised high speed services the last 15 months, even in regards to my email services from them included. But if you do a Google search on Bell Sympatico you will find
other Bell customers have had similar bad services, presently and even years ago.
Imagine that Bell Sympatico, Bell’s Sympatico Billing many times would not answer my simple question and tell me still as how much I had paid per month, had paid for my high speed 6 meg unlimited download Internet account in Nov 2007, and next also in February 2008, and how was the February account now paid for and that caught me more curious, more determined to look into the whole matter and to find out why? and what I found out was clearly crimminal.. http://thenonconformer.blogspot.com/
Bell targets ‘bandwidth hogs’ Roberto Rocha, rrocha@thegazette.canwest.com
http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/story.html?id=61d653fb-18b7-4c50-82b5-f720d0192444&k=92480
TheGazette do note that term Hog is a lie for these hogs had paid for the
Bell advertised unlisted download services and broke no laws in the process.
Money hungry, clearly greedy Bell Sympatico was willing for years now to even post false advertising promises Canada wide to all of the potential customers equally promising a high, reliable, stable high speed Internet system Canada wide even knowing before that they could and would not be able to do so.
From: paul kambulow
Sent: Thursday, April 10, 2008 11:15 PM
To: rrocha@thegazette.canwest.com
Cc: pm@pm.gc.ca
Subject: “This whole issue of throttling was brought to light when some customers who have the tools to measure their bandwidth noticed changes in their speeds”.
It was in July 2007 when for the first time I measured the speed of my internet services on a Bell recommend site http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest and when I found out the answer I next contacted Bell and all of the major newspapers editors, major MPs now too and rightfully complained Bell had deceived me, mislead me about the Speeds it was giving me.. Bell had broken my contractual obligations
Paul
http://thenonconformer.blogspot.com/
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